A university president makes a case against cowardice • Hacker News Board

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#91

Post by ty6853 » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

rimunroe wrote: post #90

ty6853 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For inexplicable reasons I was about the only one there with free reign of the hospital. They seemed so starved of guests and happy someone was there for good reasons that the hospital didn't stop me from walking around most the hallways, so I did. Small town hospital with few enough security that they all knew who I was. There was so much bad data and propoganda coming in at the beginning thar ultimately the only th…

> Small town hospital And you generalized this to the world as a whole? I admit I don’t have a citation for this, but I’d be shocked if small towns didn’t have markedly slower spread rates than cities. I feel like this was brought up frequently during the pandemic. > There was so much bad data and propoganda coming in at the beginning thar ultimately the only thing I could depend on was what I personally investigated…

Perhaps so but I ultimately use data I collected to make my own choices in my own environment, not to force choices upon you. If you had different data I would not judge you for acting differently.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#92

Post by CaptWillard » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:34 PM UTC

rimunroe wrote: post #50

CaptWillard wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to the medicine deployed against a pandemic whose death count is still entirely unknown. How many people died because of COVID? You don't know. No one knows. Meanwhile, everyone who knows better pretends that the most fundamental data about the subject, on top of which all other data and decsions were built ... is garbage.

Do you think the rough death toll of pandemics are fundamentally unknowable to some approximation? Do you think the massive increase in mortality during the pandemic was a coincidence?

Was there another pandemic whose statistics were based on mandatory asymptomatic testing (via PCR tests with deliberately high Ct values)?

Was there another pandemic where 94-95% of all deaths involved at least one comorbidity, and 77% involved three or more underlying conditions?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#93

Post by somenameforme » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

TimorousBestie wrote: post #56

CaptWillard wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to the medicine deployed against a pandemic whose death count is still entirely unknown. How many people died because of COVID? You don't know. No one knows. Meanwhile, everyone who knows better pretends that the most fundamental data about the subject, on top of which all other data and decsions were built ... is garbage.

This is what statistics is for? We rarely ever “know” (in the sense of your restrictive epistemology) the precise value of ANY demographic measure. We don’t know how many people live in the United States at any particular moment, but the Census is still useful.

It's useful when done in good faith. During COVID there were numerous decisions that even if not intended to inflate mortality figures, then they did so inadvertently. In particular the CDC gave extremely broad guidance on what to classify as a death "of" COVID, and the government was giving hospitals additional funding per COVID death. So for the most ridiculous example of what this led to, in Florida some guy died in a motorbike crash and ended up getting counted as a COVID death because he also had COVID at the time. [1] He was eventually removed from their death count, but only because that case went viral.

Even in more arguable cases, preexisting conditions and extreme senescence are ubiquitous in deaths "of" COVID, and at this point there's probably no real chance of ever untangling the mess we created and figuring out what happened. For instance Colin Powell died at 84 with terminal cancer, Parkinson's, and a whole host of other health issues. His eventual death was flagged as 'caused by complications of COVID.' I mean maybe it really was, but I think the asterisk you'd put there is quite important when looking at these stats.

[1] - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-motorcyclist-covid...

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#94

Post by ty6853 » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

TimorousBestie wrote: post #84

ty6853 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just make a flat tax for everyone and end all the special interest pandering and exceptions for the rich. It is a poisonous misapplication of the time of our government to constantly be fiddling with tax code to favor one group or another.

Because a lot of people, including many economists, believe capital accumulating endlessly to the same class of thousand-ish people is bad. A flat income tax exacerbates wealth inequality considerably.

Our tax now is worse than flat. Warren buffet brags about paying less % than his secretary.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#95

Post by russdill » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

ty6853 wrote: post #88

russdill wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were not putting COVID patients anywhere near the maternity ward and you certainly were not allowed to leave the maternity ward so I'm not sure what you were expecting. A busier than usual maternity ward?

Those protocols were apparently not in place yet, or security wasn't aware of them, or no one wanted to stop me. I walked around damn near every hallway of the hospital, which was smallish.

What month was this then? Because there was a time when you were not even allowed to be with your wife at the hospital

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#96

Post by rimunroe » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:40 PM UTC

ty6853 wrote: post #91

rimunroe wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Small town hospital And you generalized this to the world as a whole? I admit I don’t have a citation for this, but I’d be shocked if small towns didn’t have markedly slower spread rates than cities. I feel like this was brought up frequently during the pandemic. > There was so much bad data and propoganda coming in at the beginning thar ultimately the only thing I could depend on was what I personally investigated…

Perhaps so but I ultimately use data I collected to make my own choices in my own environment, not to force choices upon you. If you had different data I would not judge you for acting differently.

No one exists alone in a society. People who ignored the overwhelming evidence of the pandemic’s severity were more likely to spread the disease to other people because of their poor judgement.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#97

Post by disambiguation » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:42 PM UTC

sequoia wrote: post #49

A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?

The political and ideological divide speaks for itself, but on behalf of the common folk universities have been failing their core mission - to provide the people with a quality education. The inversion and disconnect between the cost of tuition and economic outcomes is stunning. Too many kids who don't know better are pressured into pursuing higher education and taking on massive debt, only to graduate without any job prospects or reasonable hopes of paying off their loans. The salt in the wounds is that universities are flush with cash, yet its spent on anything and everything except for the welfare of the students.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#98

Post by somenameforme » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

rimunroe wrote: post #50

CaptWillard wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to the medicine deployed against a pandemic whose death count is still entirely unknown. How many people died because of COVID? You don't know. No one knows. Meanwhile, everyone who knows better pretends that the most fundamental data about the subject, on top of which all other data and decsions were built ... is garbage.

Do you think the rough death toll of pandemics are fundamentally unknowable to some approximation? Do you think the massive increase in mortality during the pandemic was a coincidence?

Interestingly, excess mortality levels continue to remain extremely high - around 10%. [1]

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores...

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#99

Post by ty6853 » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:44 PM UTC

russdill wrote: post #95

ty6853 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those protocols were apparently not in place yet, or security wasn't aware of them, or no one wanted to stop me. I walked around damn near every hallway of the hospital, which was smallish.

What month was this then? Because there was a time when you were not even allowed to be with your wife at the hospital

April

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#100

Post by dogleash » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

sequoia wrote: post #49

A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?

>or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?

    am·biv·a·lence  /amˈbiv(ə)ləns/ noun
    the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.

Ambivalence seems like a rational take on post-secondary education in the US. I'd say an unwavering opinion (positive or negative) would be irrational. It's such a complex beast that serves so many roles and touches so many lives.

>A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions?

There are a lot of very real things that are rotten in academia if you exclude the social politics center to this article.

So when people see they're loosing federal funding... yeah, some will think along the lines of "eh, whatever, fuck 'em, maybe they'll figure out how to clean their own house." Especially if the university is also known for both sitting on a large endowment and for prioritizing self-serving administrators over doing academics.